Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/52



rible conditions as Margoliouth describes: "A form of passion which is nameless would appear at one time to have been as familiar among Moslems as of old among Hellenes. Christian lads seem often to have been the unhappy objects of this pas sion. A story is told us by the biographer Yakut of a young monk of Edessa or Urfah who had the misfortune to attract the fancy of one Sa ad the copyist. The visits and attentions of this Moslem became so offensive that the monks had to put a stop to them. Thereupon this personage pined away, and was finally found dead outside the mon astery wall. The Moslem population declared that the monks had killed him, and the governor pro posed to execute and burn the young monk who had occasioned the disaster, and scourge his col leagues. They finally got off by paying a sum of 100,000 dirhems."

Not only among Moslems, however, but among Christians as well, morals were at a low ebb in the eleventh century. One of the annalists of the Roman Church says it was an iron age barren of all goodness, a leaden age abounding in all wicked ness. " Christ was then, as it appears, in a very deep sleep, when the ship was covered with waves; and what seemed worse, when the Lord was thus asleep, there were no disciples, who by their cries might awaken him, being themselves all fast asleep."

Enemies of the Papacy have perhaps e